Ya Arnold has it's flaws as do all render engines. Modo's strong IC and portal lights make it much more suitable for interiors but since we don't do any Archvis work interiors are few and far between. Arnold also suffers from not being a bidirectionaI path tracer, so things like caustics are a pita.
I prefer Arnold for heavy production rendering for the following reasons.. 1. It can handle more data. Arnold can handle bigger and more geo, it's a beast. I tested instancing a tree asset in Modo and Arnold using sitoa. I got up to maybe 10million trees with billions of polygons in Modo, Arnold was doing substantially more with trillions of polygons and doing it faster and smoother. It wasn't just better, it was exponentially better. I think it rivals or better Renderman in this regard. 2. Arnold is stable, really really stable. It rarely crashes or spits out bad or unpredictable data and when it does it's almost always your fault. Modo's renderer tends to be unstable especially at heavier loads and it can sometimes do things that are unexpected i.e. render artifacts, bad frames etc. 3. I like using nodes in Soft using sitoa. Modo's layer system is really cool for single assets or simple scenes but becomes a nightmare with a complex system. 4. Arnold's proxy/reference system is awesome sauce. Modo has no proxy system. 5. Optimization is much easier with Arnold. Better tools for managing ray visibility on both an item and surface level... the raytype node in Arnold is the single best thing ever. 6. Linux support. I love Modo still. We use it for lookdev especially with asset creation. These are all just hard truths that I've encountered while using both packages. If was doing smaller jobs i.e. print, archvis, pure asset creation etc... I would probably still be using Modo, it's the reason why ILM's art dpt uses it. It's fast and nimble under lighter loads, that's where it shines. Some people have managed to wrangle it into a full production pipeline and that's awesome, I just couldn't do it. On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 9:33 AM, Tim Crowson <[email protected] > wrote: > @ Simon, > > *"Modo is a fantastic app and it has a fantastic render engine for the > type of end user they are focusing on. But as good as it is it's no Arnold > and has a ways to go before it is. *" > I dunno, I don't really think it's that far behind. In fact in some areas, > it seems better. Handles interiors a lot better, certainly. From what > testing I've done, I can't find anything to really place modo that far > behind Arnold. That's my opinion based on limited experience with Arnold. > > I know that you're in a unique position of having experience with both, so > can you elaborate on the differences you see between the Arnold and modo > renderers? > > -Tim > > > On 9/25/2012 11:13 AM, Simon Van de Lagemaat wrote: > > Modo is a fantastic app and it has a fantastic render engine for the type > of end user they are focusing on. But as good as it is it's no Arnold and > has a ways to go before it is. > > That said, it's a great match for the Foundry who now have the ability > to create content across the entire pipeline which is probably what they > were really looking for. > > On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 6:13 AM, Raffaele Fragapane < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Well, they got katana, modo, nuke Mari. All they need now is an >> animation solution and they stand a chance to go toe to toe with maya and >> soft if they offered bundles, at least in any shop sane enough to use >> Houdini instead of maya for fx. >> >> Interesting times ahead. Hopefully this won't mean they will forsake >> their work with rman and Arnold in favor of trying to pimp modo's engine. >> >> At least the foundry is a company focused on vfx and not a cad one barely >> tolerating their M&E division. >> >> Sent from not an iPhone >> On Sep 25, 2012 9:08 PM, "Ben Houston" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> >>> > > -- > > > > >
